We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.”
I've been back from my Icelandic sojourn for a few days. Needed a few to decompress. We landed at 4:45 on Thursday, but sat on the plane on the tarmac for four and a half more hours due to the storm. Then, after we were disembarked, the public transport at the airport was such a mess we didn't get to our car until midnight and didn't walk in our front door until 1am. Thankfully, I was able to work from home Friday, and the weekend was a mess just trying to pull all the pieces back together (get the dog, go to a birthday, etc.). The old saying that you need a vacation from the vacation doesn't usually apply to me, but definitely did this time.
I think the best place to start, though, would be with the Snaefellsness Peninsula. Our first day was spent up in this northeastern section, as I mentioned a week ago. This is a section of Iceland which is overlooked by guide books. The two we utilized had no more than two pages about it. I think it deserves more coverage. It's true you only need a day to see it, you can drive around it in about 4 hours if you don't stop too much. But you may want to stop, and in fact I say you should especially if you love volcanoes (dormant/extinct), lava fields, waterfalls, hiking and general wilderness. My pictures will never do any of the Icelandic regions justice, but I'll share them so you can all get a feel for the place.
The one thing I found intriguing was, at 6am as we drove north from the airport to our first destination, how incredibly dark it was. Without many inhabited districts, most of the roads are extremely dark, and the cloud cover (which prevented us from seeing the Aurora) was thick. As you drive north, with the Greenland Sea on your left, even with the darkness it doesn't take long to realize there are mountains all along on the right. Most probably aren't more than 1,500 feet high, but all are snowcapped due to how far north we are, which makes them seem positively gigantic. I was told most can be hiked in a few hours.
I mean the body of the scallop, not just the adductor muscle which we all love. With clams and oysters, we eat the whole succulent body and toss away the adductor muscles (which are small, anyway).
Scallops have big muscles because they swim around. I've seen them swimming in shallow water at low tide. It's sort of crazy to see a bivalve swimming.
(You know how to rememberAdduction vs Abductor muscles? Abduction means to take away.)
We have Bay Scallops (expensive, small, with sweet and tender muscle) and Sea Scallops (large, chewy, with those big muscles).
We are making scallop/bacon hors d'oevres for Thanksgiving, so scallops are on my mind.
Photo is an opened Bay Scallop. Lots of gills but not a plump body like a clam.
Do you have any favorite scallop recipes? In my view, Bay Scallops only need 45 seconds tossed in butter on a hot skillet. A sauce with Bay Scallops is obscene. Recipes come into view with the big Sea Scallops. Broiled with bacon wrap is great. So is making a ceviche with them. That is dynamite. The trick with all scallops is that it is better to undercook than overcook them.
I suspect this is correct, and has to do with the intensity of the demand on the heart. Many things are thrown into the "cardio" category which use the heart, of course, but make no constructive demands on it. Walking, hiking, speed walking, swimming, and jogging are like that.
HIIT exercises, on the other hand, do stress the heart because of the intensity of all kinds of sprints. 30-60 second maximum sprints of any form are good stressors. So is moving heavy weights. Heavy, not light weights. Sets of deadlifts reaching up to 70% of your max is a serious stressor on the heart. When you finish each set, you feel it in your heart. And you feel a bit dizzy from that stress.
What true cardiac training does is to stress the heart to the point that it is forced to build its muscle and to grow new arteries. Those new arteries can save your life when others get blocked up with gunk. If your breath can keep up with your exertion, it's not real cardiac training: it is endurance training.
What most people term "cardio" is endurance maintenance and endurance training. These are important in life, but have little or no heart consequences for the otherwise healthy.
Our Maggie'sFitness for Life program (heavy powerlifts, endurance cardio, HIIT cardio, calisthenics) incorporates all fitness aspects: Muscle and Bone strength, Endurance, True cardio, and Athleticism. We are convinced that's a balanced program for vigor for all ages.
I suggest that everybody have a plan in mind, or on paper, for what to do with money and life if your spouse drops dead, or becomes disabled or unemployed today. I guess that's assuming the spouse has an income, income-producing assets, or plain assets, or that the spouse manages some or all of the family finances.
Things happen out of the blue as I have recently seen, even to the healthiest people. Well, it's guaranteed that they will, sooner or later. It's a very good idea to have a plan, and to not pretend that things will go on like the present forever. It is impossible to make a plan in the midst of personal and financial chaos.
I suppose this is more relevant to gals, because guys begin dropping like flies after age 50 or 60, with accelerating pace each year thereafter. Gals need to know what the assets are, where they are, what the life insurance is, what the social security is, what the bills are, and need to have some idea of what they will do when sudden widowhood strikes. The odds are that it will.
Not only that, but we now know that dietary fat appears to have minimal to no correlation with cardiovascular disease in normal people. We do know that being even mildly overweight is a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease (along with breast cancer, arthritis, diabetes, Alzheimer's, etc etc.).
Addendum: If you are working on body-building with heavy weights 4 days/wk (few if any of our readers are doing that), you need to eat a lot of everything you can get your hands on just to maintain your weight, and even more to build muscle mass.
Image stolen from 
Photo: The new way of microwaving a turkey
I mean 
Whitetail hunting